/ 




Book IEL3__ 



The 

Twentieth Century 

Bible 



By 
ROBERT ADDISON DAGUE 



The Progressive Thinker 

Publishing House 

106 loomis street 

CHICAGO, ILL. 

1917 






Copyright, 1917 

By 
M. E. Cadwallader 



TBABSFERl»£D F§Ga§ 
i§HT 9FR9F 



DEC -8 J9i7 



"All nature speaks the attributes of God, 
Whose vast domains of matter and of mind 
Accord forever to His holy will. 
All life is an expression of His love, 
All death is birth to higher life; 
All discord is but the fragment of a scale 
Which, had man the power to comprehend, 
Would be replete with harmony divine." 

WILLIAM SUMNER BARLOW. 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/twentiethcenturyOOdagu 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBL 



INVOCATION. 



Our Father-Mother, God, who art, omnis- 
cient, omnipotent and omnipresent! We 
are thy children, and cannot be irrevoc- 
ably separated from thee. We direct our 
thoughts to thee, who art all wisdom, all 
goodness, all power, and we invoke thy 
aid to enable us to get into harmonious 
relations with thee. May we this day, and 
all the days we remain on earth, keep in 
tune with thee. May we think good 
thoughts, contemplate lofty ideals, do 
kindly acts to our fellow-men, be kind and 
merciful to thy dumb creatures, tolerant, 
generous and forgiving to all peoples, 
and keep our minds open for the recep- 
tion of new truths. And we pray that 
wise and sinless sages may be our guard- 
ian spirits, and that they will help us to 
resist temptation to do wrong, and will 
aid us in all our efforts to purge ourselves 
of all selfishness and evil inclinations. 

May we endeavor to comprehend the 
great truth that thou art the infinite uni- 
verse in its totality, and, as thy children, 
we inherit all thy attributes, and that we 
possess powers and potentialities now dor- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

mant, which, in the ages to come, shall 
unfold and develop as we progress on- 
ward and upward to the celestial zones, 
where we shall become mighty and glori- 
ous archangels, possessing godlike wisdom 
and power. AMEN. 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 



COMMENTS OP DISTINGUISHED 
MEN. 



Rev. C. Tinsley (Methodist) said: 

The present period demands a new the- 
ory about creation and religion. The 
story of Adam and Eve is a myth. This 
is a day of science, and the breach be- 
tween the church and educated people is 
widening. The old viewpoints will no 
longer satisfy thinking people. The 
Christian's Bible is a very embarrassing 
book. 

Rev. Lyman Abbott (Congregationalist) 
said : 

I do not believe that the Christian Bi- 
ble is inerrant and infallible, and I de- 
cline to claim for it what it does not 
claim for itself. I do not believe in the 
"Virgin Birth." It is narrated by only 
two of the New Testament historians. 
Jesus never referred to this miraculous 
birth; the Apostles never mention it. It 
is not referred to in any Apostolic epistle. 

Rev. R. Heber Newton (Episcopal) 
said: 

The claim that the Bible is infallible 
is folly that should be combated. Chris- 
tianity as an organized system of society 
is full of gross inconsistencies, and gro- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

tesque attempts at piecing out the ethics 
of Jesus from the ethics of Paganism. 
It is a shame and a disgrace to the 
Church that it is no farther advanced 
along the line of human progress. What 
an utterly baffling puzzle is the conven- 
tional dogma of the Trinity! What a 
moral monster is the God of Calvinism! 
How fiendishly wicked are the decrees 
which predestine the mass of men to un- 
escapable damnation! How thoroughly 
commercial is the traditional notion of 
atonement! How frightful beyond the 
dream of insanity is the vision of the or- 
thodox hell! How thoroughly unethical 
is the statement of salvation by faith! 

Prof. Nathaniel Schmidt (Professor of 
Semitic Languages of Cornell University) 
said : 

A new conception of the Universe has 
come. The story of the Garden of Eden 
is a myth. Adam is not a historic per- 
sonage. The story of the deluge is a 
myth of Babylonian origin. The crossing 
of the Red Sea by aid of a miracle, the 
manna falling down from heaven, and 
the water issuing from a rock; the moves 
of the Israelites through the desert, are 
all myths. Jesus criticised freely the 
Scriptures, chose what seemed good, re- 
jected the bad. He appealed directly to 
the judgment of men. There is nothing 
about him that savors of the priest. He 
put no emphasis upon doctrinal belief. 
He judged men by their deeds, not their 
beliefs. He forbade his disciples to say 
he was the Messiah. 

6 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLQ 

Prof. George Burham Foster (Chicago 
University) said: 

According to church doctrine, the path 
of the human race was downward from 
angel to devil; according to modern 
thought, it is upward from anthropoid 
and cannibal to civilization and culture. 
We are not fallen angels but developed 
animals; and history is no process of 
deterioration, but ascending ladder of 
perfectibility — a pyramid of higher ends 
and self-realizing values. Jesus said 
nothing about a lost paradise or of a 
fallen Adam, or of a golden age in the 
past. * * * The miraculous narratives 
like those told in the Bible are of no sci- 
entific importance. An intelligent man 
who now affirms his faith in such stories 
that are stultifying to science and com- 
monsense, can hardly know what intel- 
lectual honesty means. The modern man 
can no longer believe in miracles. 

Rev. J. T. Sunderland, D. D., said: 

Did the early Christian Church regard 
Jesus as God? I unhesitatingly answer, 
No. The doctrine of the Trinity, or the 
deity of Christ, came into being, as is 
well known, in the second, third and 
fourth centuries, having had its origin 
unquestionably in the speculative and ex- 
ceedingly mystical neoplatonism of Alex- 
andria. That passage in 1 John, viz: 
"There are three that bear record in 
heaven, the Father, the Son and the Holy 
Ghost, and these three are one" — a 
passage which has been the cornerstone 
of the doctrine of the Trinity — is now 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

universally cast out as spurious or a 
forgery, there being no longer even a 
shadow of a reason for believing it genu- 
ine. Every respectable scholar now omits 
it. The Revised Version of the New 
Testament, finished in 1884, at Oxford, 
England, by a committee of scholars of 
all the Protestant denominations, pro- 
nounced the passage an interpolation and 
fraudulent, and left it out of the Re- 
vised Scriptures. 

The Christian Bible nowhere makes 
the claim of inerrancy. The Bible con- 
tains many things intrinsically absurd. 
For example, the statement that the first 
woman was made of a rib taken out of 
the first man's side; the accounts of a 
serpent and an ass talking; the stories of 
Jonah living three days within a whale; 
and of Nebuchadnezzar eating grass like 
an ox for seven years. 

Rev. Washington Gladden, D. D., the 
distinguished Congregationalist, said: 
Most of us have been taught from our 
infancy that the Bible is an infallible 
book; that if it could be proved to con- 
tain a single error it would be worthless. 
The Bible makes no such claim for itself. 
The theory of its infallibility is a purely 
man-made theory. 

Rev. George Chalmers Richmond, D. D. 
(Episcopal), said: 

We need not be governed by what St. 
Paul said about women. All that he said 
about women speaking in church should 
be cut out of the Bible. The Bible 

8 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE' 

would be a better book, morally, if many 
other things were cut out of it. 

Rev. R. J. Campbell, D. D., the distin- 
guished clergyman, of England (Episco- 
pal), said: 

Man builds his God from what he 
knows of himself, only he tries to make 
him bigger. Sometimes he succeeds in 
making his God grotesque or even hor- 
rible. He has credited God with his 
own cruelties, whimsicalities, pride, van- 
ity, petty jealousies, and general unrea- 
sonableness. The ordinary pre-supposi- 
tions of evangelical Christianity are ut- 
terly absurd. Poor God! He is not to 
blame. The theologians tell us God has 
done His best, and the result has been un- 
told ages of Chaos and unimaginable suf- 
fering. All God could do was to provide a 
redeemer to save a few out of the wreck. 
You will, I hope, forgive me for the 
seeming irreverence of saying that the 
orthodox God is a fool. This God has 
prepared a hell for the poor victims of 
what is called "His righteous wrath." 
Could such a God exist and be God? 
What is the God of conventional religion 
but a big plutocrat who talks of the wick- 
edness of the victims he crushes under 
the chariot wheels of his success? What 
would you call such a God? I think, 
perhaps, you would call him scoundrel 
or maniac, but I am sure you could 
neither love nor adore him. If you had a 
spark of manliness in you, you would 
shake your fist in his face and tell him 
that in your helplessness you are greater 

a 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

than lie. Why, we are better than the 
God in whom we profess to believe! 
Now, let me say that my God is much 
more than a name or a person. When I 
speak of God, I mean the sum of all 
human excellence, and the goal of all 
true human aspiration. We have no 
means for discerning the will of God 
otherwise than by obeying that which we 
feel to be highest and truest in ourselves. 

Your doctrine of the Atonement is a 
sham. No one ever needed to die in or- 
der that God might forgive you and let 
you into heaven. No one ever did die 
for that. Your belief that Jesus died for 
that is a lie. There is no service of God 
which is not the service of man. I hold 
that the decay of organized religion 
means the release of the true spirit of 
Christianity from its swaddling clothes. 
There is a movement of the spirit going 
on all over the world today the true 
significance of which is only dimly ap- 
parent. 

The doctrine of the vicarious atone- 
ment is a fraud. It must be admitted 
that the theory that a bad man can get 
off, or ought to get off, from the conse- 
quences of his guilty acts by making a 
sort of a deal with God, who has been 
kind enough to provide a scapegoat, is 
repugnant to the better feeling of all 
right-minded people. Moreover, Jesus 
himself said we shall inevitably reap 
what we sow. 

We are facing a new synthesis. A new 
era is close at hand. Something greater 
than the church is rising into view, and 
the thoughts of men are receiving a new 

10 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

focus. In the Church of Rome it is 
being denounced as "Modernism." In 
the Protestant countries it is dreaded as 
Socialism; but it is all the same move- 
ment, and his eyes are dull who cannot 
see that it is the Spirit of God moving 
once more on the face of the waters. 
The conventional heaven and hell must 
be relegated to the limbo of superseded 
forms of thought. A new era is here. 

Rev. Charles W. Eliot, D. D., former 
President of Harvard University, said : 

Civilization is not due to the church, 
but to science. The religion of the fu- 
ture will not be based on authority either 
spiritual or temporal. The authority of 
churches and the Bible is greatly im- 
paired. In the religion of the future 
there will be no worship, express or im- 
plied, of dead ancestors or rulers — no 
more tribal, racial or tutelary gods, no 
identification of men, however majestic in 
character, as being Almighty God. The 
new religion will not teach that char- 
acter is likely to be suddenly changed 
in this world or the next. It will teach 
that repentance wipes out nothing in the 
past, and is only the first step towards 
reformation. The twentieth century will 
accept implicitly the statement that God 
is infinite spirit who pervades the Uni- 
verse just as the spirit of man pervades 
his body, and acts consciously or uncon- 
sciously in every atom of it. That God 
is vital atmosphere or incessant inspira- 
tion in whom we live, move and have 
our being. The new religion will there- 

11 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

fore be monotheistic, its God being one 
infinite force, dwelling in every living 
creature. The religion of the new era 
will reject absolutely the conception that 
man is an alien in this world. It will 
reject also the conception of man as a 
fallen being, hopelessly wicked and tend- 
ing downward by nature, and it will 
make these emphatic rejections of long- 
accepted beliefs because it finds them all 
inconsistent with a humane, civilized and 
worthy idea of God. 



12 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 



HOW THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE WAS 
MADE. (Historical.) 



Prior to the fourth century, A. D., there 
existed several hundred writings, in which 
the author of each gave his theory about 
the creation, God, Jesus, heaven and hell. 
There were disciples of each, and violent 
disputings between the various factions, 
especially over the question whether Jesus 
was man or God. In 327 A. D., Constan- 
tine, the Pagan Emperor, who had pro- 
fessed conversion to the Christian religion, 
declared that the warring factions must 
unite in a common creed and decide what 
books were inspired and what were not. 
He therefore convened a council of priests 
and others to come together, bringing 
their sacred writings to be voted upon. 
When the delegates had submitted their 
manuscripts they found there was a total 
of 308. 

Professor Ernest Haeckel, of Jena Uni- 
versity, the distinguished scientist, scholar 
and historian, in his "Riddle of the Uni- 
verse," page 311, under the head of Prim- 
itive Christianity, says: 

13 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

As to the four gospels, we now know 
they were selected from a host of contra- 
dictory and forged manuscripts of the 
first three centuries by the 318 bishops 
who assembled at the Council of Nicea 
in 327 A. D. The entire list of gospels 
numbered forty; the canonical list con- 
tained four. As the bishops could not 
agree, they determined to leave the se- 
lection to a miracle. They put all the 
books (according to the Synodical Pap- 
pus) together under the altar and prayed 
that the apocryphal books, or those of 
human origin, might remain there, and 
the genuine inspired might be miracu- 
lously placed on the tables of the Lord, 
and, tradition says, that really occurred: 
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John leaped 
up onto the table. 

Henry M. Tichenor, in his book, "The 
Creed of Constantine, " on pages 26-27, 
says : 

As gleaned from history it would be a 
spectacle to even stagger the faith of the 
most bigoted to view the makeup and 
proceeding of the First Council of Nicea. 
Call to your mind an assemblage of the 
most ignorant, illiterate, cunning ward- 
heelers that ever came to your notice; 
the Council of Nicea was far more ignor- 
ant and more illiterate and more cun- 
ning than these. It was an age so de- 
generate that it was already fit to plunge 
itself into the abyss of the Dark Ages. 
Presiding over these 318 priests sat the 
coarse, bloated-faced Constantine, the 
murderer. Such was the Council of 

14 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

Nicea, inspired of God to canonize a holy 
scripture and proclaim a religion that 
damns to eternal torture those who deny 
it. 

It is admitted that church history is 
quite hazy, fragmentary and unreliable 
prior to the fifteenth century. Christian 
writers have written voluminously trying 
to disprove the tradition that the Council 
of Nicea compiled the New Testament 
criptures, but many students of history 
say that ' ' the weight of historical authori- 
ties sustains the statements of Ernest 
Haeckel." Other writers say that this 
first Council of Nicea did select seventy- 
five books out of the 308 manuscripts, but 
the conference broke up in confusion and 
left no written records of their action. 
Ancient tradition was that they compiled 
the books of the New Testament. Some 
historians say there was more than one 
council held at Nicea. The "Holy Bible" 
made by the Council of Nicea was not gen- 
erally accepted for a century after its 
compilation. Hot disputings raged from 
327 A. D. to 363 A. D., when the Council 
of Laodicea endorsed the seventy-five 
books of the Constantine Nicea Bible. This 
action of that convocation did not, how- 
ever, stop the wrangling over what manu- 
scripts were inspired by God, and what 

15 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

were not. This dispute went on until the 
days of Martin Luther and protestantism, 
when nine books were cut out of the Con- 
stantine (Catholic) Bible, which left but 
sixty-six books in the Protestant Bible, 
while there are seventy-five in the "Word 
of God of Roman Catholics. 

Prior to the reign of Constantine the 
Christians taught and practiced commun- 
ism (or near-Socialism). Rollins' Ancient 
History (London Edition, vol. IX., page 
312), says: 

For over 200 years all Christians were 
communists, who held the land and 
waters, as well as all timbers and pre- 
cious metals, etc., in common. The lot 
was cast in deciding all questions, and 
the assembled commune judged all dis- 
putes. This bold democracy was held in 
abhorrence by the pagans, who trafficked 
in lands and took profits from others' 
labors. 

Tertullian, one of the early Christian 
writers, said: 

All is common with us except women. 
Jesus was our man, God and brother. 
He restored unto all men what cruel 
murderers took from them by the sword. 
Christians have no master, and no Chris- 
tian shall be bound for bread and rai- 
ment. The land is no man's inheritance. 
None shall possess it as property. 

16 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE! 

Charles E. Sheldon, a student of history, 

says: 

Constantine paganized Christianity and 
was the source of the destruction of 
communism. To quote an ancient au- 
thor, we are indebted to Zosimus in re- 
gard to Constantine, saying one of the 
early Fathers conveys to us the facts we 
need to establish the claim of his part 
in the destruction of communism. 

He says Constantine stands as the 
pivot over which for ages the two great 
parallel schemes of religion balanced. 
Nearly all the noble, original thoughts, 
sentiment, humanity, economic democ- 
racy and communism were wiped out un- 
der him, Socrates' "Hist-Eccles," III-C- 
XI., taking the story from Zosimus' "Hist 
Romaika." 

Good encyclopedias declare that this 
author can not be accused of a deliber- 
ate misrepresentation of facts. We here 
get the information that Constantine was 
ambitious, unscrupulous and cruel, and 
that it was through his cunning plots, 
even to the extent of murdering his own 
family, that he, step by step, rose to the 
full control of his empire. 

Zosimus remarks that Constantine's 
crimes were so great that when he ap- 
plied to the pagan priesthood for forgive- 
ness and absolution those clericals re- 
fused to grant forgiveness. This forced 
him to have his supplication to the Chris- 
tian priests, who forgave him, took him 
with all his sin, and thenceforward Chris- 
tianity was adopted. This was the real 
basis of the Constantinian deal which at 

17 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

once legalized Christianity. (See Ward's 
"Ancient Lowly," vol. II, pages 686-687.) 

More properly speaking, Constantine 
paganized the Christian Church by fusing 
it with the Pagan religion, and then made 
it a state religion. Instead of practicing 
the communism of Jesus and his followers, 
he, his priests and successor stamped it 
out. The private ownership of lands and 
other public necessities was allowed; the 
collection of interest, rents and profits was 
permitted, the rich were favored, the poor 
exploited, kingcraft and priestcraft were 
fostered and strengthened, inventors, phil- 
osophers, reformers, were burned at the 
stake as heretics, and the professing Chris- 
tian kings deluged the world with blood 
by the atrocious wars they waged. 



What other great Bibles have there been 
besides the Hebrew and Christian Bibles? 
The most conspicuous are: 

1. The "Vedas" of the Brahmans. 

2. The "Tripitaka" of the Buddhists. 

3. The Avesta (or Zend-Avesta) of the Per. 

sians. 

4. The Five Kings, or Chinese Sacred Books 

of Confucius. 

5. The Tao-tse-King, or Sacred Book of 

Tao-Tse. 

6. The Mohammedan Koran. 

18 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

Every nation and era of the past have 
had their inspired and sacred scriptures, 
suited to their times. Doubtless there will 
be many bibles written in future cycles. 



19 



The 

Twentieth Century 

Bible 



By 
ROBERT 
ADDISON 
DAGUE 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 



BIBLE OF THE TWENTIETH CEN- 
TURY. 



CHAPTER I. 

'7N THE month of June, A. D. 1917, a 
spirit of inspiration came upon me, 
H which I have named the Spirit of 
Truth and Justice, and which, com- 
manding me, said : 

Robert Addison Dague, take thy pen 
and write the "Bible of the Twentieth 
Century," which will be for the instruc- 
tion and guidance of humanity for two 
thousand years. 

Verily I say unto you that the old dis- 
pensation of ignorance, strife, competition 
and war is rapidly drawing to its end, and 
a new era is about to be ushered in, in 
which intelligence, peace and brotherhood 
will prevail, and swords will be beaten 
into plowshares, and spears into pruning 
hooks, and nations will learn war no more. 

The Spirit of Truth and Justice would 
have all mankind to know that co-opera- 
tion (Socialism) and the Harmonial Phil- 
osophy (Modern Spiritualism) are twins, 
heaven-born, the pioneer prophets of 
which were those inspired humanitarians, 

23 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

Karl Marx and Andrew Jackson Davis, 
who, like John the Baptist, came preach- 
ing in the wilderness of ignorance and 
war, heralding the coming of a more in- 
telligent and peaceful age. 

Blessed art all who believe that God or 
Nature has so interwoven the happiness 
and well being of every human soul into 
one inseparable bond of unity and inter- 
dependence that what is the natural right 
of one is the right of all, and an injury 
to one is the concern of all. 

Blessed is he who accepts as his polit- 
ical and religious creed that of the in- 
spired prophet, Thomas Paine, who said: 
1 ' The world is my country, and to do good 
is my religion." 

Blessed is he who yearns for the abol- 
ishment of wars and the establishment of 
a Socialist co-operative commonwealth, 
the four cornerstones of which are justice, 
reciprocity, universal brotherhood and 
universal peace. 

Blessed is he who has emerged from the 
Jungle of the competitive system of in- 
dustrialism in which beasts and selfish 
men compete, fight, and kill for profits 
and spoils, the motto of which is " Might 
makes right," and blessed are they who 
have evolved to the highlands of Social- 
ism and co-operation, the law of which 

24 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

is " Every one shall receive the full value 
of his labor, and all shall be rewarded ac- 
cording to their deeds." 

Blessed is he who has blown away the 
chaff and rubbish of pagan theology about 
Jesus Christ, and now knows that he was 
intensely human and, in truth, was both a 
Socialist and a Spiritualist. 

Blessed is he who would dethrone all 
kings and establish social democracies 
throughout the world in which men and 
women would exercise equal social, polit- 
ical and religious rights and privileges, in 
which all would be free to do whatsoever 
they might desire to do, providing that in 
the doing thereof they would not infringe 
upon the rights of others. 

Blessed is the man who does not believe 
that all needful knowledge was revealed 
in the past, and who thinks all new ideas 
are heretical and modernisms, and whose 
religious creed was not made by ancient 
men who believed that the earth is flat 
and that God possesses all the passions and 
weaknesses of man ; and blessed is he who 
was born with an open mind, and reason- 
ing powers so developed that he can keep 
step with humanity in its march onward 
and upward out of the jungle of ignorance 
and superstition to lofty heights of knowl- 
edge and happiness. 

25 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

CHAPTER II. 

Blessed were Darwin and Wallace, who 
were the discoverers and exponents of Na- 
ture 's law of evolution, which inflicted 
death wounds upon the pagan fable of 
orthodox Christianity, that God created 
the Universe in six days, out of nothing. 

Blessed are Paine and Ingersoll, those 
mental giants and ardent lovers of human- 
ity, who exhibited to the vision of all peo- 
ples the illogical, grossly unjust and false 
theology that had for nearly two thousand 
years held myriads of human beings in ab- 
ject mental slavery. 

Thrice blessed is he who is both a So- 
cialist and Spiritualist, he who under- 
stands that Socialism is the science of in- 
dustrialism, which strives for a perfected 
civilization, and who knows that Alfred 
R. Wallace and Sir Oliver Lodge, the two 
most distinguished scientists of the cen- 
tury, also scores of other great thinkers 
of every profession in all the countries of 
the world, testify that Spiritualism is a 
well established science. 

Blessed is he who is no longer satisfied 
with ancient superstitions and fables, and 
accepts the teachings of science, and 
knows that the earth has evolved from a 
gaseous and fluid state to what it is now, 

26 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

and that its progress is marked by steps 
or eras separated each from the other by 
thousands of years. Scientists call this 
the doctrine of "Periodicity." From the 
days of Moses until recent times there had 
been little or no progress made in any 
thing that makes for civilization. Our 
fathers harvested grain with a scythe and 
sickle and threshed it with a flail ; and our 
mothers carded, spun and wove the cloth 
as did the ancient Pharaohs. Fifty years 
ago a new era began to dawn. At the 
beginning of a new period or cycle, the 
earth seems to be forced up a rung on 
Nature's evolutionary ladder; the old 
things die and a new order comes into 
activity. Then inventors invent new ma- 
chines; scientists and philosophers make 
new discoveries; statesmen propose radi- 
cal reforms; heretics rise up like mush- 
rooms and dispute old theologies. Old 
bibles are discarded and new bibles are 
written; good men are made better, and 
bad men are so disturbed and mentally 
jostled that they become worse and rush 
into crime and wars. Animals, humans, 
religions, governments, unfitted for the 
new era, dwindle and die. 



27 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

CHAPTER III. 

The Spirit of Truth and Justice, which 
prompts the writer to prepare this, the 
" Bible of the New Era," desires, above 
all else, that Socialism be spiritualized, 
and Spiritualism be socialized. For that 
reason is this scripture given to the 
world. 

The aim of Socialism is to improve the 
material environments of humanity, to 
establish a civilization in which there shall 
be equal opportunities to all, special priv- 
ileges to none; while Spiritualism would 
provide proof undeniable that death (so- 
called) is not extinction of man's con- 
scious personality, but that he is a child 
of Infinite Wisdom and Goodness— that he 
possesses embryonic and dormant powers 
and potentialities which, when fully un- 
folded and developed, will make him a 
mighty archangel of wisdom, power and 
glory. 

Let these heaven-born twins, Socialism 
and Spiritualism, be indissolubly united, 
and when the union is consummated let 
no man attempt to put them asunder. 



28 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Spirit of Truth and Justice says: 
"Write and say to the people that the ten 
commandments of Spiritualism, and the 
ten commandments of Socialism written 
herein, constitute all the "Holy Scrip- 
tures necessary for the well-being of hu- 
manity, until the end of the new era, viz : 

Ten Commandments of Socialism. 

I. Thou shalt not own, for profit, the 
crude or raw materials provided by Na- 
ture, such as lands, water, fuel, minerals, 
air, sunlight, electricity, and other public 
necessities and utilities, which all the peo- 
ple must use to live. Those should be 
owned by the people collectively. 

II. Six days shalt thou labor at some 
useful occupation, with head or hands, 
and receive the full value of thy toil ; and 
thou shalt not steal from others the re- 
wards of their labor by means of specula- 
tion, monopoly, stock-watering, interest, 
rents or profits. 

III. Thou shalt not worship PROFITS 
as thy God [because profits is the getting 
of values from others without rendering 
an equivalent therefor]. Thy God shall 
be Infinite Intelligence, whose attributes 
are justice, wisdom and love. 

29 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

IV. Thou shalt keep seven days of each 
week holy by dealing justly with thy fel- 
low-men and doing unto all others as thou 
wouldst that they should do unto thee. 

V. Thou shalt honor thy father and 
mother, also all men and women, and shall 
provide pensions for all whose age exceeds 
sixty years, sufficient for their support the 
remaining years of their life. 

VI. Thou shalt provide maternity homes 
for all prospective mothers, in which they 
may abide while awaiting the birth of 
their child, and for two months thereafter, 
and be tenderly treated, without expense 
to them. 

VII. Thou shalt not require children to 
work in mines, mills, shops, or other indus- 
tries, but shall send them to school, where 
they may be educated free of expense to 
them. 

VIII. Thou shalt promote and maintain 
the equal social, political and religious 
rights and privileges of men and women 
alike. 

IX. Thou shalt thyself have unrestrict- 
ed liberty to enjoy such religion as thy 
conscience approves (if it is not detri- 
mental to the public welfare), and thou 
shalt defend the right of all others to have 
the same privilege; and thou shalt at all 
times defend the people 's right to freedom 

30 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

of speech, free assemblage, a free press, 
free public schools, and religious liberty. 

X. Thou shalt by thy ballot and by all 
other legal means at thy command, do all 
thou canst do to abolish the competitive 
system of industrialism, under which, for 
profit, men compete, contend, cheat, fight, 
rob and kill— a system that appeals to all 
that is selfish, and vile, and cruel, and dis- 
honest in man, the legitimate fruits of 
which are extremes of riches and poverty, 
ignorance, squalor, crime and war, the 
motto of which is "might makes right- 
to the victor belongs the spoils" ; and thou 
shalt favor the disarmament of nations, 
and the creation of international courts 
of arbitration in which all disputes be- 
tween nations may be peaceably adjusted ; 
and thou shalt help to maintain a co- 
operative commonwealth, the four corner- 
stones of which are Justice, Reciprocity, 
Universal Brotherhood, and Universal 
Peace; a pure social democracy in which 
the people will administer the government 
through the initiative, referendum and re- 
call—a system of industrialism and gov- 
ernment that appeals to all that is just, 
and honest, and ennobling in the human 
mind, the motto of which is "An injury 
to one is the concern of all." 



31 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

CHAPTER V. 

And the Spirit of Truth and Justice 
sayeth: Know ye not that the Christians 
of the first three centuries practiced com- 
munism, and made it the chief doctrine of 
the church? 

In Acts, fourth chapter, we read: 

And the multitude of them that be- 
lieved were of one heart and one soul; 
neither said any of them that aught of 
the things that he possessed were his 
own, but they had all things in common. 
* * * Neither was there among them 
that lacked: for as many as were the 
possessors of lands or houses sold them, 
and brought the prices of the things that 
were sold, and laid them down at the 
apostles' feet: And distribution was made 
to every man according as he had need. 

Jesus Christ was a communist and 
pacifist, as well as seer and Spiritualist. 
His birth was announced by angels, who 
came singing " Peace on earth, good will 
to men." He was called the Prince of 
Peace. 

After he was grown to manhood, and 
became a teacher, he said : 

Beloved, a new commandment I give 
unto you, that ye love one another. 
Blessed are the peacemakers. If ye say 
ye love God whom ye have not seen and 
hate your brother whom ye have seen, 
ye are liars and the truth is not in you. 

32 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

Such were the sayings of Jesus, and 
such are the teachings of Socialism and 
Spiritualism. Both were eclipsed by a 
pagan emperor and his successors, who 
repudiated these heaven-born twins and, 
by laws enacted, substituted a paganized 
church which has masqueraded as Chris- 
tian for seventeen centuries. 

Now, happily, mammonism is in its 
death struggle. Paganized governments 
and a paganized church are being scourged 
by the cyclone of war. They sowed the 
wind and must reap the whirlwind. The 
old cycle of ignorance, persecution, cru- 
elty and war is about ended, and the new 
era of enlightenment, toleration, justice 
and peace is at our very doors. Social 
democracies are being born, and a reju- 
venated and purified church is on the way 
in which the true gospel of Jesus Christ 
will be preached instead of the gospel of 
pagan Constantine and his successors. 

Let all the people rejoice and be happy, 
and give thanks that the old cycle is about 
ended and the glorious new era is close at 
hand. 

The Commandments of Spiritualism. 

I. Thou shalt not believe that death (so- 
called) is extinction of man, but that it 
is birth to higher life, and is as natural, as 

33 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

necessary, as beneficent, as birth into this 
life ; and that there could be no birth with- 
out death, or transition. Andrew Jackson 
Davis said : 

Death is a kind and welcome servant, 
that unlocks with noiseless hand the 
flower-encircled door, to show us those 
we love, whom the world calls "dead." 

II. Thou shalt not believe that death is 
a penalty inflicted upon mankind and all 
creatures below the human, because the 
first man and woman offended God by 
some unknown act, and that he sentenced 
not only them but also myriads of inno- 
cent people, not yet born, to suffer death 
here, and then be tortured endlessly in 
hell hereafter, unless they believe the hor- 
rible statement that God caused his only 
begotten son to be cruelly murdered to 
appease his wrath. Thou shalt not accept 
as truth the fable that God's plans were 
defeated by a wicked, ubiquitous spirit in 
the form of a snake, who was more power- 
ful than God. 

III. Thou shalt not believe the doctrine 
of the Trinity, which is that God consists 
of three persons, viz : the Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost ; that the Son is as old as his 
father— is in truth his own father— and 
that the Holy Ghost is as much God as 
either one or both of the others; that this 

34 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

is a mystery which neither men nor angels 
understand, but all who do not believe it 
will be sent to hell forever. This is a 
heathen superstition, promulgated about 
the third century. Thy God shall be In- 
finite Intelligence, omniscient and omni- 
present, being the illimitable universe in 
its totality. 

IV. Thou shalt not accept the church 
doctrines of immaculate conception, nor 
of vicarious atonement, which latter is 
that all mankind are born totally de- 
praved because of Adam's sin, and that 
they may commit all the crimes in the cal- 
endar and escape all punishment for their 
sins if, before they die, they accept a 
church creed and are baptized. These doc- 
trines are pagan inventions, and their 
propagation has cursed humanity beyond 
the power of man to estimate. Thou shalt 
believe that as man sows so shall he reap, 
virtue brings its own reward and vice its 
own punishment, and that no shed blood 
of animals, men or gods can enable the 
wrong-doer to escape the penalty that 
overtakes and punishes the transgressor. 

V. Thou shalt not believe the blasphem- 
ous charge made against God by profess- 
ing Christians, that he is now torturing in 
hell myriads of men, women and children, 
and will burn unnumbered millions more 

35 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

not yet born because they could not accept 
as true the pagan belief in vicarious atone- 
ment or never heard about it; but thou 
shalt defend God against such blasphem- 
ous accusations by affirming that all indi- 
viduals make their own happiness or un- 
happinesis as they obey or disobey Na- 
ture's laws, and that the doorway to 
reformation is never closed against any 
human being, here or hereafter. 

VI. Thou shalt do all in thy power to 
educate thy fellow-men and have them 
repudiate the insane and blasphemous 
statement of the Calvinistic orthodox the- 
ology which is that "God foreordained 
and predestinated a large portion of the 
human family to be burned in hell end- 
lessly 'for his own glory and good pleas- 
ure,' and that myriads of elect babies not 
yet born are predestinated and elected to 
eternal damnation. 

VII. Thou shalt be diligent in thy en- 
deavors to educate the superstitious and 
deluded church adherents that, according 
to their own Bible, Jesus Christ said noth- 
ing about the "fall of man," total deprav- 
ity, a virgin born god, the trinity, the 
vicarious atonement, nor trans-substantia- 
tion (or that a priest can, by saying a few 
words in Latin, change a piece of bread 

36 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

into the literal flesh and body of Jesus 
Christ). 

VIII. Thou shalt not accept the pagan 
doctrine that Jesus Christ is Almighty 
God, or even a third part of God, but thou 
shalt know the truth that he was an in- 
spired man— a prophet and Spiritualist. 

IX. Thou shalt read history and inform 
thyself, and learn that prior to the fourth 
century there were 308 Christian bibles, 
when, by order of a pagan emperor, sev- 
enty-five books were selected to constitute 
the Catholic Bible, and in the fifteenth 
century the Protestants cast nine books 
out of the Catholic Word of God, leaving 
but sixty-six books in the Protestants' 
Holy Bible ; and thou shalt know that the 
world's most profound scholars say that 
both bibles contain hundreds of interpola- 
tions, alterations and forged passages. 
Moreover, thou shalt know that many of 
the writers of the books now in both bibles 
were illiterate, uneducated men, who 
never dreamed that what they wrote 
would be gathered together by command 
of a pagan emperor, put into a book, and 
labeled "Holy Bible." 

X. Thou shalt foster a desire to know 
the truth about the science of Spiritual- 
ism, which has been pronounced the great- 

37 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

est of all sciences by the world's most 
illustrious scientists and philosophers ; and 
thou shalt study its history and become 
familiar with its lofty teachings and pure 
ethics, and learn that all the inspired 
prophets of ancient and modern times 
were Spiritualists, among whom were 
Abraham, Moses, Daniel, Elijah, Homer, 
Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Jesus, Peter, 
James, John, Swedenborg, Andrew Jack- 
son Davis, Hudson Tuttle, Harriet Beech- 
er Stowe, Lincoln, and others. These had 
frequent converse with disembodied intel- 
ligences, who once inhabited physical 
bodies; and thou shalt know that both 
the phenomena and teachings of Spiritual- 
ism are glad tidings of great joy to all 
humanity, in that they prove that death, 
so-called, is not extinction, but is birth of 
the soul to higher life, and that man be- 
yond the grave retains his memory and 
love of his friends who still linger in the 
mortal form, and that the orthodox heaven 
and hell are mental conditions, not places ; 
that no angry, changeable, tyrannical God 
nor an all-powerful, ubiquitous Satan ex- 
ists; and that no human soul is irretriev- 
ably lost, but that all spirit intelligences 
shall unfold and progress in wisdom and 
happiness forever. 



38 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

Declaration of Principles of Spiritualism. 

1. We believe in Infinite Intelligence. 

2. We believe that the phenomena of 
Nature, physical and spiritual, are the ex- 
pressison of Infinite Intelligence. 

3. We affirm that a correct understand- 
ing of such expressison, and living in ac- 
cordance therewith, constitutes the true 
religion. 

4. We affirm that the existence and per- 
sonal identity of the individual continues 
after the change called death. 

5. We affirm that communication with 
the so-called dead is a fact scientifically 
proven by the phenomena of Spiritualism. 

6. We believe that the highest morality 
is contained in the Golden Rule: " What- 
soever ye would that others should do 
unto you, do ye also unto them." 

7. We affirm the moral responsibility of 
the individual, and that he makes his own 
happiness or unhappiness as he obeys or 
disobeys Nature's psychic laws. 

8. We affirm that the doorway to refor- 
mation is never closed against any human 
soul, here or hereafter. 

Thy religion cannot rise higher than thy 
aspirations and thy deeds. Thy prayers 
go to no higher levels than thy practice. 

39 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

Thy invocations affect none but thyself; 
thy creeds are of no benefit unless thou 
make use of them as scaffolding in the 
erection of stately spiritual mansions. Thy 
deeds outlive thy creeds, What thou doest 
to help others abides eternally. A pebble 
cast in mid-ocean moves its waters to the 
fartherest shore: so every act of thy life 
will influence thee to the fartherest shore 
of eternity. Every act is a cause that pro- 
duces an effect, and every effect becomes 
itself a cause which produces its effect, 
and the chain of cause and effect is end- 
less. Hate begets hate; love produces its 
kind. "As a man thinketh, so is he." 
Ella Wheeler Wilcox said : 

"So many gods, so many creeds, 
So many paths that wind and wind; 
While just the art of being kind 

Is all the sad world needs." 

Let us, as we pass through the earth- 
life, scatter kindly deeds along our path- 
way. Kindness is the key that unlocks all 
the doors of the myriads of successive 
zones and spheres of the spirit world, and 
lets us progress upward and onward 
toward the realms of wisdom and unal- 
loyed bliss. Selfishness is the key that 
locks us in the prison-house of ignorance 
and unhappiness. 



"40 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 
CHAPTER VI. 

There is no death. The stars go down 
To rise upon some fairer shore, 

And, bright in heaven's jeweled crown, 
They shine for evermore. 

There is no death. The dust we tread 
Shall change beneath the summer showers 

To golden grain, or mellow fruit. 
Or rainbow-tinted flowers. 

There is no death. An angel form 

Walks o'er the earth with silent tread; 

He bears our best-loved ones away, 
And then we call them "dead." 

Born into that undying life, 

They leave us but to come again; 

With joy we welcome them — the same 
Except in sin and pain. 

And ever near us the unseen, 

Their dear immortal spirits, tread; 

For all this boundless universe 
Is Life. There is no dead. 

— Selected. 



No, my beloved, there is no death.. Na- 
ture offers not a scrap of proof that there 
is any real death (annihilation). You 
cannot extinguish a single atom or elec- 
tron. Nature proves that what we call 
death is a change only— is birth to another 

41 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

zone or sphere. There can be no birth 
without death (so-called). Without the 
two, birth and death, there would be uni- 
versal stagnation. We can kill nothing. 
If we smash the body the life or spirit 
goes on working in a higher realm of 
vibration and the body disintegrates into 
its component parts, but each atom gets 
busy again and goes to forming new asso- 
ciations. We can wreck the body, which 
is composed of matter, but we can destroy 
neither spirit nor matter. We can only 
compel the inhabitant of the body to move 
out, and our jostling only causes the atoms 
of matter to seek other associations. All 
the universe is alive, from grain of sand 
to the blazing sun. All nature is throb- 
bing with ceaseless energy. You may 
knock things down, but they will get up 
again. Nature resents all idea of death 
or stagnation. Even the solidest granite 
and steel are vibrating with life. Nature 
resurrects every apparent failure into suc- 
cess. If she destroys one planet or sun 
she makes another to take its place. The 
day always follows the night. If things 
ripen and die in the autumn, they appear 
again in the springtime. If we sleep with 
death for a night, we are more alive than 
ever the next morning. If we wound a 
tree with an axe, the tree sends an extra 

42 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

amount of sap to the injured spot and 
heals the wound. 

If you cast a bowl of wet sand on a 
smooth surface it quickly adjusts itself 
into a shape of flowers and assumes sym- 
metrical and beautiful forms. The frost 
on the window-glass gives proof of the 
existence of a natural law of art. The 
foulest ponds and stagnant water produce 
most beautiful flowers. The caterpillar 
has an offensive-looking body, with many 
feet, but out of him comes a butterfly 
with most gorgeous colorings. The eggs 
of birds are a shapeless protoplasm, but 
three weeks of warmth will transform that 
slimy substance into a glorious creature of 
beauty and song. The ant-lion has numer- 
ous legs, strong jaws, sharp teeth, and eats 
smaller insects. Under the microscope he 
looks like a ferocious monster. After a 
time he wraps himself in a blanket which 
he weaves of silk and sand, and curls up 
and sleeps. Later he opens the door and 
is a mild-mannered insect, and thereafter 
is a strict vegetarian and nice fellow; 
whereas when an ant-lion he lived in a 
cave, he now functions in the glorious air 
and sunshine. 

Here, we are living in our caterpillar 
and lion-ant bodies. We are not yet fully 
born. We are still in Nature's incubator. 

43 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

When we break out of this old worm body 
then we will live in a finer zone, not vis- 
ible, yet real. Electricity, air, and all 
powerful things are invisible. Our real 
selves are not visible now ; only our bodies 
can be seen. 

Nature is pushing and pulling every- 
thing, man included, upward. Man has a 
glorious destiny. Nature, properly under- 
stood, tells us that God is Infinite Intelli- 
gence—is life— all life. The poet well says: 

"All are parts of one stupendous whole, 
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul." 

The rosebud has all the possibilities of 
the fully developed rose. It will in due 
time unfold. Men are "God-buds" on the 
tree of Infinite Intelligence. They are 
gods in embryo. Some time they will un- 
fold. What a glorious destiny! How in- 
spiring the thought ! We could not exist 
without God ! He, or it, could not be in- 
finite without us. We are a part of God. 
We can no more die than can He. Now 
we are prattling infants in Nature's 
school. We are in the kindergarten de- 
partment playing with blocks and baby 
things. Later we shall be promoted. Oh, 
my brother, you who think you are only a 
worm of the dust and shall never be any- 
thing greater— you who are struggling 
with poverty and sorrow— look up ! Take 

44 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

courage! You were not created for ex- 
tinction. You are here in a "worm body" 
for an infinitely wise purpose. There is 
nestling within that shell in which you 
live an angel in embryo, possessing god 
like powers and beauties not yet unfolded. 
You are a bud. Some time in the future 
you will fly through space with the veloc- 
ity of light, step from star to star, asso- 
ciate with the wise sages of other worlds 
and of the past ages, to bask forever in 
the glory of celestial spheres. There is 
no death. All— all is life. 

No, my beloved ; this world is not a vale 
of tears, except as man has made it so. 
"Man's inhumanity to man makes count- 
less millions mourn." Snail it always be 
so ? No. Ignorant man invented defective 
systems of religion and economics, but 
they, like all other things, are subject to 
the law of evolution or unfoldment. All 
error and injustice must be rung out and 
truth and justice be ushered in. The doc- 
trine that "might makes right," and "to 
the victor belongs the spoils," is the law 
of the jungle, but will not 'govern in 
higher levels of humanity on which the 
law of equity, reciprocity and the golden 
rule prevails. 

Rev. L. D. Reynolds says: 

Spiritualism is broadening the views 

45 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

of men and women concerning creeds 
and ancient beliefs: proving that a true 
religion is not one of blind faith and 
dogmatic theories. We believe in the 
triumph of science over superstition; we 
believe in the Golden Rule, which Con- 
fucius gave to his people 2,500 years ago, 
and we revere the precept from Buddha, 
"Thou shalt not attempt, either by word 
or action, to lead others to believe that 
which is not true." Spiritualism offers 
no creed-bound belief as a foundation 
for faith, offers no unproven statement 
as a declaration of principles, offers no 
form of ceremony as a part of its dogma. 
Every declaration has behind it the posi- 
tive evidence of fact, and we glean the 
gems of truth from all the literature of 
the ages. 

Every religion on earth has for its 
foundation faith, the belief in a future 
life; yet ours is the only one that proves 
it. Spiritual phenomena has been a vital 
feature of all past history. The various 
bibles of all the religions of the world is 
evidence of this fact. 

The trend of popular thought is away 
from orthodox theology and distinctly 
toward rational views concerning all the 
bibles of the world. There is clearly a 
growing tendency to discredit the super- 
natural in religion and the trend of sci- 
entific thought is toward Spiritualism, 
which is bound to be the religion of the 
future. 

The Old Testament Scriptures are liter- 
ally filled with accounts of departed spir- 

46 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

its communicating with those in the flesh. 
Abraham, Moses, Isaac, Jacob, Daniel, 
Solomon, Elijah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Elisha, 
Jesus, Paul, John, Peter, and all the 
prophets, and the twelve disciples, were 
mediums and Spiritualists. All down the 
ages, in both Christian and so-called pa- 
gan countries, seers (mediums) have been 
inspired by disembodied intelligences to 
keep alive the faith of humans that there 
is life after death. Were it not for that 
truth, humanity might have degenerated 
into atheism and materialism. Confucius, 
the great Chinese prophet, was a medium, 
so was Buddha. Socrates, the great Ath- 
ens philosopher, who lived five hundred 
years before Jesus, conversed daily with 
his spirit guides. He is still regarded as 
one of the wisest philosophers the world 
ever saw. 

Spiritualism has always taught true 
doctrines. It was the religion of all the 
prophets and seers before Jesus was born. 
His birth was announced by a company of 
angels (spirits). He conversed daily with 
spirits. When he began his ministry, he 
selected twelve disciples, every one of 
whom was a clairvoyant or possessed me- 
diumistic powers. Often when the disci- 
ples were met together, spirit phenomena 
occurred. When Paul and Silas were con- 

47 



TWENTIETH CENTURY B I B JL E 

fined in jail, the prison doors were un- 
locked by spirits and the prisoners walked 
out. It is a historical fact that for three 
hundred years the early Christians often 
held seances and received spirit messages. 
Mr. Leo Oehmler, a reputable writer, 
says : 

It was. the spirit of Christ that inspired 
the Spiritualistic movement called Chris- 
tianity, which, in its pristine purity, and 
— as expounded by its most powerful ad- 
vocate, St. Paul — was a pure Spiritualism 
as yet undefiled by the added trappings 
attached to it after the Council of Nicea 
had convened under Constantine. 

It is a well known fact that the early 
Christians, when arrested in Rome under 
Nero, were usually found in a dark room. 
Ecclesiastical history records for us that 
all kinds of psychic phenomena attended 
the meetings and efforts of the early 
Christians. 

Spiritualists do not deny that the Chris- 
tian Bible contains inspiration. They do 
insist, however, that it was not all in- 
spired, nor is it infallible. Spiritualists 
say that if you take out of the Bible its 
Spiritualism, but little of value will be 
left. 

When our clerical critics assail Spir- 
itualism they are assaulting all the great 
and good seers and prophets not only of 
the Bible, but of all the ages. Spiritual- 

48 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

ists admit that ignorant spirits can some- 
times obsess mediums, and communicate, 
as well as the good. Jesus well under- 
stood that, for he conversed with them, 
preached to them, and cast them out of 
obsessed persons (undeveloped mediums). 
The Bible says Jesus preached to the spir- 
its in prison (hades), which proves that 
souls may progress in the Spirit World. 

Jesus never claimed to be other than 
the son of God, and said all are "sons of 
God." He never uttered a word about 
the "fall of man," the trinity, the vica- 
rious atonement, or the immaculate con- 
ception. All those doctrines were invent- 
ed and promulgated since his time by 
pagans. Jesus taught a practical religion. 
He said, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap: 
Every one shall be rewarded according to 
his deeds done in the body." The pagan 
doctrine of the atonement teaches a con- 
trary proposition. It says by compliance 
with certain forms of church, bad men 
may escape reaping as they sowed, and go 
to a heaven of joy which they did not 
earn by right doing. 

Spiritualism does not dispute the divin- 
ity of Jesus, but does deny his deity, or 
that he was Almighty God. He made no 
such claim himself. Spiritualists say he 
was an inspired man, possessing marvel- 

49 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

cms psychic powers. He was seer, proph- 
et, healer, and Spiritualist. He often con- 
versed with the spirits of Moses and Elias 
and others. 

Spiritualism does not deny that there 
exists mental and moral conditions in this 
and the next world which may be desig- 
nated as "heaven" and "hell." They 
say that there is punishment in the Spirit 
World, but it is not of a wrathful, vindic- 
tive nature, nor endless, but is for educa- 
tional and reformatory purposes. All 
souls will progress and become happy 
some time, but they must gain that happi- 
ness by right thinking and right doing. 
The poet said, "Heaven is not gained by 
a single bound." Two of the articles of 
the Spiritualists' "Declaration of Prin- 
ciples" are in the following words: 

We affirm the moral responsibility of 
the individual, and that he makes his 
own happiness or unhappiness as he 
obeys or disobeys Nature's psychic laws. 

We affirm that the doorway of refor- 
mation is never closed against any hu- 
man soul, here or hereafter. 

It was a sad day for true Christianity 
(Spiritualism) when, in the latter part of 
the third century, Constantine, the bloody, 
tyrannical Emperor, captured Christian- 
ity, made it a state religion, and pagan- 

50 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

ized it. He had most cruelly murdered his 
wife, put his son and many others to death, 
and had committed so many atrocious 
crimes that even the pagan priests con- 
demned him. Then he professed to em- 
brace Christianity. Writers tell us that 
the spirits of the people whom he had 
murdered haunted him, and he became 
furious and determined to put a stop to 
the seances of the Christians, and to elim- 
inate Spiritualism from the church. He 
did not wholly succeed in doing that, as 
many of the church fathers (Catholics) 
since Constantine 's day were clairvoyants, 
and mediumistic ; but that church, becom- 
ing rich and powerful, finally forbade con- 
sulting the spirits outside of the Catholic 
Church. 



51 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 



CHAPTER VII. 

The Spirit of Truth and Justice sayeth 
to me: Beloved, know ye not that while 
Spiritualism and Socialism are called 
"modernisms" by the misinformed, yet 
both are truths as old as humanity. In 
the early ages of the world, angels walked 
and talked with men and taught them 
eternal truths. In the days of Abraham, 
Moses and Daniel, the spirit phenomena 
were wonderful. All along down the 
ages, in all nations, there have been great 
mediums. Daniel, Elijah, Socrates, Jesus, 
Joan of Arc, Swedenborg, Andrew Jack- 
son Davis, and others. Probably history 
mentions no medium of greater psychic 
powers than were possessed by the Maid 
of Orleans, known as Joan of Arc, an illit- 
erate peasant girl of France. The war 
between England and Prance had result- 
ed in a succession of defeats for the 
French army, until the King seriously con* 
templated escaping from the country. 
Then Joan went to the King and told him 
that a spirit voice had spoken to her inner 
ear and told her to go to the King and 
request him to make her commander-in- 
chief of the Frencfe armies. The King 
called a meeting of his counsellors, and 
they auestioned the girl at great length. 

52 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

She discoursed so eloquently, and seemed 
to possess such marvelous military knowl- 
edge, that he believed that God had sent 
her to save the country, and he made her 
supreme commander of his armies. She 
won great battles and saved her country. 
She said a spirit voice directed her in all 
commands given by her to her generals. 
She was but seventeen. 

After the war Joan went back to her 
parents and worked awhile in the fields, 
as she formerly did. The clergy now got 
busy and decided that Joan was a witch, 
and an instrument of the devil. Then 
they burned her at the stake. The spirits, 
however, sustained her to the last. With 
her last breath she declared she saw and 
heard exalted spirits. 

But the burning of Spiritualists is no 
longer practiced. The old era of cruel 
persecution is nearly gone. A better cycle 
is at our doors. Rev. Mr. Reynolds truly 
says: 

Spiritualists are the pioneers in this 
world-wide movement, and it is to the 
spiritual mediums that the scientific 
world has come for the evidence of this 
great truth, this knowledge, around 
which theology weaves a network of un- 
certainty and superstition. Other emi- 
nent scientists all over the civilized world 
are studying these problems, and in every 

K3 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

case where thoroughly and sincerely in- 
vestigated, the verdict has been that we 
survive the change called death, that the 
spirit still lives and can come hack and 
communicate. This is a proven fact, and 
to decry it is simply a mark of intoler- 
ance or lack of information. 

It is especially noticeable that ortho- 
dox ministers are unconsciously preach- 
ing Spiritualism more and more, all the 
time. When they talk about ministering 
angels, and the guiding hand of those 
who have passed on, and thousands of 
similar expressions, we know it means 
just what our organization stands for, 
and if their minds could be cleared from 
the bewildering pagan inconsistencies of 
the Bible they would be Spiritualists. 

There are millions of people who be- 
lieve in dreams, spiritual communica- 
tions, presentiments and apparitions, but 
are accepting them blindly and with no 
effort at reaching a solution of any prob- 
lem. 

The New Testament says: 

Try the spirits that ye may know of 
what manner they be. 

Paul declared: 

There is a diversity of gifts from God. 
Some shall heal the sick, others dream 
dreams, see visions, prophesy, and speak 
in divers tongues. 

Spiritualists are the only people of mod- 
ern times who practice those gifts. On 
the day of Pentecost, spoken of in the New 

54 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

Testament, many persons were influenced 
by the spirits to speak in various lan- 
guages and prophesy. 

When the Protestants split off from the 
Roman Catholics, many of them devel- 
oped mediumistic powers. Martin Luther 
was mediumistic, but not a clear seer. He 
saw spirit forms dimly, but thought they 
were the devil, or some of his servants. 
Later, Emanuel Swedenborg became a 
marvelous seer, and wrote a score of books 
describing the spirit spheres, and what he 
saw and heard. Still later came Andrew 
Jackson Davis, whose clairvoyant gifts 
were greater than those of any predeces- 
sor since the days of Jesus. When a lad 
of tender years, illiterate and timid, he 
was influenced to write bulky volumes, 
which, for profound reasoning, exposition 
of science and philosophy, stated clearly 
and forcibly, have not been surpassed by 
any writer in America. 

Victor Hugo, the great French writer, 
was a Spiritualist. Queen Victoria of 
England for many years held daily con- 
versations with her spirit husband, 
through John Brown, medium, whom she 
paid a yearly salary, and who was an in- 
mate of the Queen's palace. President 
Abraham Lincoln often attended Spirit- 
ualist seances, and frequently received 

55 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

communications through, Mrs. Maynard. 
Harriet Beecher Stowe said she deserved 
no credit for writing "Uncle Tom's Cab- 
in," as every line of it was spoken to her 
inner ear by a spirit voice. 

*M. Jfc. Jfr Afr. Jf. 

W ^P" W T& W 

The following are quotations of a few 
of the world's most distinguished clergy- 
men, scientists and statesmen, who de- 
clared their belief in Spiritualism: 

"Italia," of Eome, a few years ago said: 

Joan of Arc recently appeared to Pope 
Pius and addressed to him solemn words 
of encouragement and exhortation. It 
was while the Holy Father was indulging 
in devout prayer and meditation in his 
private oratory, immediately after the 
ceremony of reading the decree of beat- 
ification, that the spirit appeared. 

Rev. Adam Clarke, D. D., the author of 
"Clarke's Bible Commentaries," which 
are accepted as authority by Christians 
throughout the world, on pages 298 and 
299 of that work says : 

I believe there is a supernatural and 
spiritual world in which human spirits, 
both good and bad, live in a state of con- 
sciousness. I believe that any of these 
spirits may, according to the order of 
God, in the laws of their place of resi- 
dence, have intercourse with this world, 
and become visible to mortals. 

56 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

Rev. H. W. Thomas, D. D., the great 
Methodist, who for nearly a quarter of a 
century preached every Sunday to thous- 
ands of people in one of the great theaters 
of Chicago, said: 

I am a Spiritualist. I would have to 
give up the Bible if I denied the ministry 
of spirits. * * * Thirty years ago I was 
so fortunate as to discover that Spirit- 
ualism meant a continuity of life. I 
found that I was in sympathy with its 
teachings. * * * I am a Spiritualist. 

Rev. R. Heber Newton (Episcopalian) 
preached a sermon which was published 
in the "New York World" of April 11, 
1897, in which he said: 

There are certain truths which are 
coming into the world through Modern 
Spiritualism. * * * It is a fact concern- 
ing Modern Spiritualism that through it 
the conviction of the life to come is 
taking a new hold on man's mind and 
heart. Orthodoxy has never denied it. 
Spiritualism is a truth which is embodied 
in the records of the very beginning of 
our Christian religion. 

Rev. Lyman Abbott, D. D., of Beecher's 
old church (Congregationalist), Brooklyn, 
N. Y., said : 

I do not believe that those who have 
died have gone far away from us. I love 
to think my mother follows me with her 
eyes as she did when I was a boy. I be- 

57 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

lieve that the strange, subtle, inexplica- 
ble and indefinable influence that some- 
times comes into my life is from her. 

Rev. Theodore Parker, in writing in his 
private journal, says : 

It [Spiritualism] has more evidence 
for its wonders than any historic form of 
religion heretofore. It admits all the 
truths of religion and morality in all the 
world's sects. 

Henry Ward Beecher, Brooklyn, N. T.: 

There have been times in which I de- 
clare to you heaven was more real than 
earth; in which my children that were 
gone spoke more plainly to me than my 
children that were with me. These 
glimpses of the future state are a great 
comfort and consolation to all those who 
are looking for the development of per- 
fect manhood. It is generally admitted 
from the very beginning of things this 
world has been open to the influence of 
spirits. That false notions have arisen 
during all ages concerning Spiritualism 
does not prove its fallacy by any means. 

Archdeacon Colley, of England, rector 
of Stockton, says: 

Spiritualism comes as a godsend to 
millions who are incapable of believing 
the Christian faith without its aid. It 
teaches that death is the gate of life, 
hence that there is continuous and im- 
mediate and conscious being with no 
sleeping in the grave. 

58 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

Bishop John P. Newman (Methodist), 
who was President Grant's pastor, often 
declared himself to be a Spiritualist. He 
frequently attended Spiritualist seances. 
In a published sermon he said: 

The belief is almost universal that the 
spirits of the departed have returned to 
earth. The two worlds met in bible times; 
then the communications were as real as 
between New York and London today. 
But do the communications between the 
two worlds continue to this day? Let us 
rise to the sublimity and purity of the 
great Bible truth, and on this day con- 
sole our hearts therewith. Yes, Wesley 
and Swedenborg were right in their be- 
lief that they communicated with their 
spirit friends. 

Rev. Dr. Joseph A. Milburn (Presbyter- 
ian) said: 

They are forming a sect called Spirit- 
ualists. You cannot laugh at Spiritual- 
ism. Only shallow people laugh at Spir- 
itualism. Only ignorant people laugh at 
Spiritualism. The thoughtful man no 
longer laughs at the Spiritualist. That 
man is reaching for a truth beyond the 
truth that he can find within the bounda- 
ries of the visible church. 

Rt. Rev. Samuel Fallows of Chicago, 
Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church, 
says : 

I believe in apparitions, and think it is 

possible that there are mediums who 

59 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

have the power of materializing visitors 
from the spirit world. Psychic research 
has opened up a new field, and it is no 
longer scientific to pooh! pooh! at Spir- 
itualism. 

J. Godfrey Raupert, of London, who has 
been especially delegated by Pope Pius X. 
to lecture to Catholic audiences in Amer- 
ica on Spiritualism and its dangers, said: 
It is no longer possible to put the phe- 
nomena aside. A few years ago it was 
the policy of the church to avoid the 
dangers of spiritism by saying nothing 
about it, but today the scientific men all 
over the world have recognized spiritism 
as a definite and real power, and to 
shelve it as a dangerous policy. Conse- 
quently, the Pope has asked me to tell 
Catholics just the attitude to take toward 
this mysterious subject. * * * The 
Church admits the reality of these phe- 
nomena. 

The Jtev. John Wesley, founder of the 
Methodist Church, was a believer in Spir- 
itualism. On page 269, Vol. II., of his 
Journal, he says : 

What pretense have I to deny well at- 
tested facts because I cannot comprehend 
them? The English in general, and, in- 
deed, most men of learning in Europe, 
have given up all accounts of apparitions 
(spiritual appearances) as mere old wives' 
fables. I am sorry for it, and willingly 
take this opportunity of entering my sol- 
emn protest against this violent compli- 

60 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

ment which so many who believe the Bi- 
ble pay to those who do not believe it. 

Infidels and materialists well know 
(whether Christians know it or not) that 
the giving up of apparitions is, in effect, 
the giving up of the Bible. And they 
know, on the other hand, that if but one 
account of the intercourse of men with 
spirits be admitted, their whole "castle 
in the air" (deism, atheism and material- 
ism) falls to the ground. I know no rea- 
son, therefore, why we should suffer this 
weapon to be wrested out of our hands. 

On page 496, Wesley remarks, in refer- 
ring; to spiritual gifts : 

The grand reason why the miraculous 
gifts were so soon withdrawn was, not 
only that faith and holiness were well 
nigh lost, but that dry, formal, orthodox 
men began even then to ridicule what- 
ever gift they had not themselves, and to 
decry them all as either madness or im- 
posture. 

There are numerous arguments which 
abundantly confute their vain imagina- 
tions. But we need not be hooted out of 
one; neither reason nor religion require 
this. 

The Rev. Dr. Isaac K. Fnnk, D. D., 
Ph. D., LL. D., a distinguished clergyman, 
author and publisher, after twenty years 
of investigation of Spiritualism declared 
it to be a proven truth, and says that Je- 
sus and the early Christians were Spirit- 
ualists. He published a book of 540 pages 

61 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

in which he quotes about twenty-five of 
the world's greatest scientists to prove 
Spiritualism to be an established fact, 

I might quote the statements of scores 
of famous clergymen, scholars and states- 
men, who have declared their belief in 
Spiritualism, but will content myself with 
quotations from a few of the more than 
fifty noted scientists who have unquali- 
fiedly put themselves on record as Spirit- 
ualists. 

Prof. Richard Hodgson, M. A., LL. D., 
member of the British Society for Psych- 
ical Research, and secretary of the Amer- 
ican Psychical Research Society, testifies 
as follows: 

For a period of twelve years I have 
had communication with the spirits of 
those long dead, through the mediumship 
of Mrs. Piper. Today I am prepared to 
say that I am a believer in the possibility 
of messages being received from what 
people call the spirit dead. 

Prof. A. R. Wallace, of England (the 
great naturalist, and member of many sci- 
entific societies, who shares the honor with 
Charles Darwin of being the discoverer of 
the principles of evolution), says: 

We are justified in taking the facts of 
Modern Spiritualism (and with them the 
only tenable one) as being fully estab- 
lished. Its whole course and history pro- 

62 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

claim it to be neither imposture nor de- 
lusion, nor survival of beliefs of savages, 
but a great and important truth. 

Again he says: 

My position, therefore, is that the phe- 
nomena of Spiritualism in their entirety 
do not require further confirmation. They 
are proved quite as well as any facts are 
proved in other sciences, and it is not 
denial or quibbling that can disprove any 
of them. 

Dr. Elliott Coues, member of the Na- 
tional Academy of Sciences, Smithsonian 
Institution, Washington, D. C, M. A., M. 
D., Ph. D., Norwich University, Johns 
Hopkins University, a Spiritualist and a 
medium also, published an article in the 
Philadelphia ' ' Sunday Express, ' ' in which 
he says: 

I have myself seen ghosts of a good 
many dead persons. On several occa- 
sions I have been aware of the presence 
of spiritual bodies of deceased persons 
who gave information that was not oth- 
erwise obtainable, and who conveyed to 
my mind a conviction of their identity. 
* * * Let me tell you that I know that 
the alleged phenomena of Spiritualism 
are true, substantially as alleged. 

Sir William Crookes, F. R. S., editor 
London Quarterly Journal of Science, in- 
ventor of the Crookes vacuum tube which 
made possible the x-ray, and author of 

63 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

"Researches in the Phenomena of Spirit- 
ualism, " says: 

That certain physical phenomena, such 
as the movement of material substances, 
and the production of sounds resembling 
electrical discharges, occur under cir- 
cumstances in which they cannot be ex- 
plained by any physical law at present 
known, is a fact of which I am as certain 
as I am of the most elementary facts in 
chemistry. 

Prof. Sir Oliver Lodge, LL. D., presi- 
dent of Birmingham University (Eng- 
land), the world's most famous scientist, 
recently said : 

I tell you with all the strength of the 
conviction which I can muster, that we 
do persist, and that those in the beyond 
still continue to take an interest in what 
is going on on earth; that they know far 
more about things on this earth than we 
do, and are able from time to time to 
communicate with us. I have conversed 
with my spirit friends just as I can con- 
verse with anyone in this audience. 

Dr. Robert Chambers, F. R. S., LL D., 
author Cyclopedia English Literature, etc.. 
declares : 

I have for many years known that 
these phenomena are real, as distin- 
guished from imposture, and when fully 
accepted will revolutionize the whole 
frame of human opinion on many impor- 
tant matters. 

64 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

Herbert Mayo, F. R. S., M. D., professor 
of Anatomy and Psychology in King's 
College, London, England, we quote as 
follows : 

Twenty-five years ago I was a hard- 
headed unbeliever. Spiritual phenomena, 
however, suddenly and quite unexpect- 
edly were soon after developed in my 
family. This led me to inquire and to 
try numerous experiments in such a way 
as to preclude the possibility of trickery 
and self-deception. That the phenomena 
occur there is overwhelming evidence, 
and it is too late now to deny their exist- 
ence. 

Mr. Leon Favre, Consul - General of 
France, says: 

I have long, carefully and conscien- 
tiously studied spiritual phenomena. Not 
only am I convinced of their irrefutable 
reality, but I have also a profound assur- 
ance that they are produced by the spir- 
its of those who have left earth; and fur- 
ther, that they only could produce them. 

Camille Flammarion, one of the world's 
greatest astronomers, says: 

I do not hesitate to affirm my convic- 
tion, based on personal examination of 
the subject, that any scientific man who 
declares the phenomena denominated 
"magnetic," "somnambulistic," "medi- 
umistic," and others not yet explained 
by science, to be "impossible," is one 
who speaks without knowing what he is 

65 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

talking about; and also any man accus- 
tomed, by his professional avocations, to 
scientific observations — provided that 
his mind is not biased by pre-conceived 
opinions — may acquire a radical and ab- 
solute certainty of the reality of the facts 
alluded to. 

Perhaps no one has brought greater 
learning, combined with a natural apti- 
tude for experimental research, to the 
investigation of the recondite phenomena 
of Spiritualism, than Prof. Kobert Hare. 
He was a graduate of Yale, long a distin- 
guished professor of chemistry in the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania, and an honored 
member of the most celebrated scientific 
societies in the land. The results of his 
experiments were received as almost infal- 
lible, so carefully and wisely were they 
instituted. He held some departments of 
electricity entirely to himself, so far had 
he pushed his discoveries. 

When Spiritualism was presented to him 
he was an outspoken infidel. By pursuing 
science on its material plane he could see 
no reason for a life hereafter. His interest 
was awakened, and he at once set himself 
at work to test experimentally its truth- 
fulness. He proceeded precisely as he 
would to test a fact in electricty or me- 
chanics. 

After many years of carefully conduct- 

66 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

ed experiments, Prof. Hare was compelled 
to believe in the reality of spiritual phe- 
nomena. He was not easily convinced, but 
finally testified unqualifiedly that Spirit- 
ualism is a demonstrated scientific fact. 
His tests stand as yet unrivaled in their 
scientific accuracy and conclusiveness. 

Cromwell F. Yarley, F. R. S., Europe's 
greatest electrician, said: 

I know of no instance either in the 
new or old world in which any clear- 
headed man who has carefully examined 
the phenomena has failed to become a 
convert to the spiritualist hypothesis. 
The abuse and ridicule we have had to 
encounter came only from those who 
have never had the courage or decency 
to make an investigation of it before de- 
nouncing that about which they are en- 
tirely ignorant. In this respect the world 
seems to have made no progress in the 
last one hundred and seventy years. 

Dr. W. F. Barrett, professor of Experi- 
mental Physics and Dean of Faculty in 
Royal College of Sciences of Ireland, tes- 
tifies : 

I do not hesitate to affirm that a care- 
ful and dispassionate review of my own 
experiments, extending over a period of 
twenty years, together with the investi- 
gation of evidence supplied to me from 
trustworthy sources, compels my belief in 
Spiritualism as a science, based solely on 
facts open to the world, through an ex- 

67 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

tensive system of mediumship, its car- 
dinal truth, established by experiment, 
being that of a world of spirits, and the 
continuity of the existence of the indi- 
vidual spirit through the momentary 
eclipse of death. 

Among other famous scientists who ac- 
cept Spiritualism as a science as well es- 
tablished as is astronomy, chemistry, or 
any other science, are Prof. Wm. James, 
professor of psychology, Harvard Univer- 
sity; Prof. Cesare Lombroso, alienist-pro- 
fessor of psychiatry, University of Turin, 
Italy; Dr. T. L. Nichols, F. R. S., author 
of "Esoteric Anthropology," etc.; Prof. 
James Challis, F. R. S., professor of as- 
tronomy and philosophy, Cambridge Uni- 
versity, England ; Dr. Baron Carl Du Prel, 
Munich; Dr. John Elliotson, F. R. S.,^M. 
D., professor of medicine in London Uni- 
versity, president of the Royal Medicine 
and Chirurgical Society, etc.; Earl of 
Crawford and Belcarres, F. R. S., past- 
president of the Royal Astronomical So- 
ciety ; Prof. William Gregory, F. R. S., M. 
D., professor of chemistry in Edinburgh 
University, author of "Outlines of Chem- 
istry," etc.; Prof. Wm. Denton, eminent 
geologist, author of "Our Planet, Its Past 
and Future," "Soul of Things," etc.; 
Prof. Joseph Rodes Buchanan, M. D., pro- 

68 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

fessor of Psychology, Electric Medical In- 
stitute of Cincinnati, author of "Thera- 
peutic Sarcognomy," Manual of Psychom- 
etry," etc.; Prof. G. J. Tichner, professor 
of Physics anr Natural Philosophy, Leip- 
sic, author of "The Soul of Planets," etc. 

I might mention the names of many 
other distinguished scientists who say 
spiritualism is a science thoroughly estab- 
lished as such. 

Among the world's greatest statesmen, 
authors, editors and poets, who were out 
spoken Spiritualists, are: 

Hon. Arthur Balfour, late Prime Min- 
ister of England ; Wm. T. Stead, the noted 
English journalist and physicist, himself a 
writing medium; Henry W. Longfellow, 
William Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf 
Whittier, Lydia Maria Child, Julia Ward 
Howe, Lucretia Mott, Ella Wheeler Wil- 
cox, William Lloyd Garrison, Elizabeth 
Stuart Phelps, Marie Corelli, Prof. Wil- 
liam Lockwood, Emmanuel Swedenborg, 
James M. Peebles, M. D., Ph.D., Charles 
Dawbarn, Prof. Edgar L. Larkin, Leland 
Stanford, John K. Francis, Horace Gree- 
ley, Mrs. M. E. Cadwallader, J. J. Morse, 
George W. Brown, M. D., Cora L. V. Rich- 
mond, Abraham Lincoln, Mary T. Long- 
ley, Daniel W. Hull, Moses Hull, Lyman. 

69 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

C. Howe, Lillian Whiting, Maud Lord 
Drake, and scores of other talented, schol- 
arly, distinguished lawyers, editors, scien- 
tists, authors, clergymen, and people of 
all professions and callings. 

And the Spirit of Truth and Justice 
prompts me to say the names of the pio- 
neers of Modern Spiritualism mentioned 
above should be honored, and go down to 
future generations in this, the Twentieth 
Century Bible. 



70 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 



THE GOD OF SPIRITUALISM. 

Mr. J. Lincoln Bishop thus sings of the 
God of Spiritualists: 

Every glittering diamond, sparkling in end- 
less space, 

Reveals God and His Glory, He is shining in 
their face; 

There is not a single atom that floats up in 
the air 

But assures His Love and Wisdom, for the 
Architect is There. 

The moon reflects its silver, as it tracks its 
dial round, 

Lighting up the old earth garden, where Goa 
walks without a sound, 

Through the Harvest fields of midnight, scat- 
tering glory o'er the ground. 

He is seen in morning glories, at sunrise on 

the hills, 
He is heard in rippling music of the laughter 

of the rills 
As they flow along to ocean, to greet Him, 

for He is there, 
Rocking on the sunset billows; yes, our God, 

is everywhere. 

You can see Him in the morning, when the 

sun is out of sight, 
Coming with His stretch of silver, driving 

back the clouds of night; 
You can see Him at the noon-day, in the fields 

of waving corn; 
You can see Him in the dewdrop, lingering 

from early morn; 

71 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

You can see Him in the evening, showering 

behind his golden beams, 
Flooding hilltops, clouds and mountains with 

His tinted glory-streams. 

You can see Him in the springtime, carpeting 

the fields with green, 
And you linger there enchanted by the beauty 

of the scene; 
You can see Him in the summer, in the golden 

harvest fields — 
Hear Him singing in the sickle, flashing light 

on reapers' reels; 

You can see Him in wild-flowers, that cap 
the summer hills; 

You can see Him in the willows, bending o'er 
the rippling rills; 

You can see Him in the autumn, in the dead 
leaves on the ground, 

Where sad, hazy Indian summer falls on land- 
scape all around. 

He is on the starlit river. Oh, how beautiful 

it seems! 
Where the lovers love to linger, floating down 

the stream of dreams; 
He is singing in the wildwood, in the song of 

every bird, 
Sending forth the sweetest music that the 

ear has ever heard. 

He is seen in vivid flashes, in the clouds that 

quickly form, 
Speaks in rolling thunder echoes: He's the 

majesty of storm. 

In tornado's mighty rushes you can hear His 
bellows roar, 

72 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

Coming on in blackest midnight, while in 

front the eagles soar. 
Take my heart, dear God of Nature, for I love 

You more and more, 
As exhilarating lightning plays around upon 

the floor, 
While outside the wild wind rages, and the 

rain in rivers pour: 
Yes, dear God of all the ages, You're my love 

for evermore. 

He's in every living thing that ever lived upon 

this earth; 
He's the author of its being, He was with it 

at its birth. 
All these things I worship dearly, standing 

here upon the sod — 
Every thought I have assures me that the 

Universe is God. 



73 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 



PROPHECIES. 



NATURE'S REVELATION. 



God of the granite and the rose! 

Soul of the sparrow and the bee! 
The mighty tide of being flows 

Through countless channels, God, from 
Thee. 
It leaps to life in grass and flowers, 

Through every grade of being runs, 
Till from creation's radiant towers 

Its glory flames in stars and suns. 

O ye who sit and gaze on life, 

With folded hands and fettered will, 
Who only see amid (the strife 

The dark supremacy of 111, 
Know that, like birds, and streams, and 
flowers, 

The life that moves you is divine! 
Nor time, nor space, nor human powers, 

Your god-like spirit can confine. 

God of the granite and the rose, 

Soul of the sparrow and the bee! 
The mighty tide of being flows 

Through all Thy creatures back to Thee. 
Thus 'round and 'round the circle runs, 

A mighty sea without a shore; 
While men and angels, stars and suns, 

Unite to praise Thee evermore. 

— LIZZIE DOTEN. 

75 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

The Spirit of Truth and Justice moves 
the writer of these scriptures to prophesy 
of the coming in the near future of a new 
industrial, political and religious era, in 
which social democracies will supplant 
monarchies and plutocracies, and the re- 
ligion of Spiritualism will eclipse all 
other systems of faith. These heaven-born 
twins are in harmony with the Golden 
Rule; they are founded on justice; they 
oppose wars ; they would abolish poverty* 
they would protect and educate all chil- 
dren ; they would pension and make com- 
fortable the aged ; they would enfranchise 
women and place them on an equality 
with men. When they arrive in all their 
fullness, a paganized church will have dis- 
appeared and a religion founded on sci- 
ence will prevail. Kings, plutocrats, mo- 
nopolists, and all selfish robbers of their 
fellowmen will have gone. There will be 
no strikes, nor blacklistings, nor dynamit- 
ing, nor war; there will be no unem- 
ployed ; poor girls will no longer sell their 
bodies for bread ; the jails and insane asy- 
lums will contain few or no inmates ; there 
will be no beggars in the land, and no 
festering slums in our cities ; there will be 
no pale-faced, half-starved women work- 
ing in sweatshops, no tender children en- 
slaved in shops and mills. Then labor will 

76 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

receive its just reward; peace and pros- 
perity will cover the earth ; then will life 
be worth living. 

Robert G. Ingersoll, with prophetic 
vision, saw the coming of the new era 
when Spiritnalism and Socialism would 
be triumphant. He said: 

A vision of the future arises. * * * I 
see a world where thrones have crum- 
bled and where kings are dust. The aris- 
tocracy of idleness has perished from the 
earth. 

I see a world without a slave. Man at 
last is free. Nature's forces have by sci- 
ence been enslaved. Lightning and light, 
wind and wave, frost and flame, and all 
the secret subtle powers of the earth and 
air are the tireless toilers for the human 
race. 

I see a world at peace, adorned with 
every form of art, with music's myriad 
voices thrilled, while lips are rich with 
words of love and truth; a world on 
which the gibbet's shadow does not fall, 
a world where labor reaps its full re- 
ward, where work and worth go hand in 
hand, where the poor girl, trying to win 
bread with the needle — the needle that 
has been called "the asp for the breast 
of the poor" — is not driven to the des- 
perate choice of crime, or death, or sui- 
cide, or shame. 

I see a world without the beggar's out- 
stretched palm, the miser's heartless, 
stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the 
livid lips of lies, the cruel eyes of scorn. 

77 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

I see a race without disease of flesh or 
brain — shapely and fair, married har- 
mony of form and function, and as I 
look, life lengthens, joy deepens, love 
canopies the earth, and over all in the 
great dome shines the eternal star of 
human hope. 

Ella "Wheeler Wilcox, Socialist and Spir- 
itualist, moved by a spirit of inspiration, 
thus sang of the new age and the govern- 
ment-to-be : 

I have listened to the sighing of the burdened 
and the bound, 

I have heard it change to crying with a men- 
ace in its sound, 

I have seen the money-getters pass unheeding 
on the way, 

As they went to forge new fetters for the peo- 
ple day by day. 

Then the voice of labor thundered forth its 

purpose and its need, 
And I marveled and I wondered at the cold 

dull ear of greed. 
For as chimes in some great steeple tell the 

passing of the hour, 
So the voices of the people tell the death of 

purchased power. 

All the gathered dust of ages God is brushing 
from His book; 

He is opening up its pages, and He bids His 
children look, 

And in shock and conflagrations and in pesti- 
lence and strife, 

He is speaking to the nations of the brevity 
of life. 

78 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

Mother earth herself is shaken by our sor- 
rows and our crimes, 

And she bids her sons awaken to the portent 
of the times. 

With her travail pains upon her she is hurling 
from their place 

All the minions of dishonor to admit the com- 
ing race. 

By the voice of justice bidden, she has torn 
the mask from night, 

All the shameful secrets hidden she is drag- 
ging into light, 

And whoever wrongs his neighbor must be 
brought to judgment now, 

Though he wear the badge of labor or a 
crown upon his brow. 

There is growth in revolution, if the word is 

understood: 
It is one with evolution, up from self to 

brotherhood. 
He who utters it unheeding bent on self or 

selfish gain, 
His own doom is speeding, though he toil or 

though he reign. 

God is calling to the masses, to the peasant 

and the peer, 
He is calling to all classes that the crucial 

hour is near; 
For each rotting throne must tremble and 

fall, broken in the dust, 
With the leaders who dissemble and betray 

the people's trust. 

Still the voice of God is calling, and above the 

wreck I see, 
And beyond the gloom appalling, the great 

government to be; 

79 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

From the ruins it has risen, and my soul is 

overjoyed, 
For the school supplants the prison, and there 

are no unemployed! 

And there are no children faces in the factory 

or at the loom — 
They are out in sunny places with all sweet 

things that bloom. 
God has purified the alleys. He has made the 

white slaves free, 
And they own the hills and valleys, in the 

government to be. 



Frances E. "Willard, that talented seer 
and prophet, thus spoke of the better cy- 
cle and era of Socialism, Spiritualism and 
genuine Christianity: 

I believe that competition is doomed. 
The trust whose single object is to abol- 
ish competition has proved that we are 
better without than with it. What the 
Socialist desires is that the corporation 
of humanity should control all produc- 
tion. Beloved comrades, this is the fric- 
tionless way; it is the higher way; it 
eliminates the motives for a selfish life; 
it enacts into our every-day living the 
ethics of Christ's gospel. Nothing else 
will do it; nothing else can bring the 
glad day of universal brotherhood. 

Oh, that I were young again, and it 
would have my life! It is God's way out 
of the wilderness and into the promised 
land. It is the very marrow of Christ's 
gospel. It is Christianity applied. 

80 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

Mrs. M. E. Cadwallader, Editor of The 
Progressive Thinker, contrasting the 
doubts and uncertainties of the old era 
with the knowledge of the new age, said : 
When the tiny rap at Hydesville electri- 
fied the world, it did more to arouse 
the thinking faculties of man than did 
two thousand years of Christianity. The 
message it brought was so stupendous 
that even the leaders of the church were 
obliged to take cognizance of it. Sorrow- 
ing hearts mourning for their loved ones 
were comforted. Daily duties were per- 
formed with more zeal because of this 
new hope. Life held something more 
than ever before. The grave had lost its 
victory; Death's sting was taken away. 

Spiritualism has more to offer to the 
human soul than any other religion, and 
has made millions of people happy. It 
embraces all that hope, all that faith, 
which is instinctive in the human heart. 
It is the keynote of the inspiration of the 
poets and songsters of the past. They im- 
mortalized it in poetry and song. They 
wrote of faith and hope. The world read 
and waited. They sung of love — but 
something was lacking. They wrote and 
sung of home and heaven — but the key 
to human hearts had not been struck. 
Of what use is life, cried the listening 
hearts, if death ends all? Of what use 
is faith and hope to the heart in despair? 
Of what use is love, if it ends at the open 
grave? Of what use is home or heaven, 
unless death brings reunion with those 
we love? 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

When the historian shall write of the 
wonderful progress made in the nine- 
teenth century, in the evolution of the 
race, he will say: "Another era has come 
to mankind," and add: "The crowning 
glory of the nineteenth century was the 
discovery that it was possible to hold 
communication with those who had pass- 
ed from this to a higher plane of life." 

Alexander Pope, in his "Essay on 
Man," written in 1732, prophesied of this 
new era, and thus described the people 
who had evolved out of the jungle of the 
old theology into the new: 
Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, 
But looks through Nature up to Nature's God; 
Pursues that chain which links the immense 

design 
Joins Heaven and Earth, joins Mortal and 

Divine. 
Sees that no being any bliss can know, 
But touches some above and some below, 
And knows where faith, law, morals all began 
All end, in Love of God and Love of Man. 

Self-love thus pushed to social, to divine, 
Gives thee to make thy neighbor's blessing 
thine. 

God loves from whole to part; but human 

soul 
Must rise from individuals to the whole. 
Friend, parent, neighbor, first it will embrace; 
His country next, and next all human race. 
Wide and more wide, the o'erflowing of the 

mind 

82 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

Takes every creature in, of every kind; 
Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty 

blest, 
And heaven beholds its image in his breast." 

Allan Kardec, the distinguished seer 
and prophet of France, prophesied of this 
glorious era. He said: 

I know that a time is near at hand 
when the trappings of error will fall from 
all religious systems. The shrines of 
bones and nails from the Cross will dis- 
appear. Reason will overcome the mon- 
ster iniquities of false religion. The only 
sacred thing to be found in religion is 
the presence of our angel friends, a holy 
communion of Saints, who come closer 
to us day by day as we grow in the free- 
dom of spiritual truth. 

Dr. Jas. M. Peebles, M. A., M. D., Ph. D., 

the celebrated traveler, author and speak- 
er, formerly the U. S. Consul at Trebi- 
zond, author of "The Seers of the Ages," 
"Immortality," etc., who is a Spiritualist 
and Socialist, who, at the age of ninety- 
six, prophesies of the near approach of a 
new era, said: 

Spiritualism is not a narrow cult to 
gratify fame with an unprincipled ambi- 
tion to annihilate any great personality. 
Its real spirit is construction rather than 
destruction. It is as open as the skies, 
free as the summer winds, and wide as 
the measureless space. It is the gospel 
of demonstration, the gospel of brother- 

83 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

hood, the gospel of diversity in unity, 
and the mighty motive power for the 
world's final redemption. 

Spiritualism is the only religion that 
practically proves its teachings true — 
proves it through present-day spiritual 
messages from the spirit world. In 
brief, Spiritualism is God's living witness, 
through mediumistic sensitives, of con- 
scious existence beyond the grave, as a 
foretaste of a fadeless and glorious im- 
mortality. 

Spiritualism is a science, a truth, a 
religion, a philosophy, and is the founda- 
tion of all the world's great religions. 
To the dissemination of Spiritualism I 
have devoted upwards of sixty years of 
a strenuous life. 

Spiritualism is to us a sacred word. 
And for this all-inclusive, all-uplifting re- 
ligion, I will continue to think, to write, 
to speak, to sacrifice, and, if needs be, to 
die, for I know that I have above "a 
house not made with hands, eternal in 
the heavens." 



84 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 



IMMORTALITY. 



By Joseph Jefferson. 

Two caterpillars crawling on a leaf, 

By some strange accident in contact came; 

Their conversation, passing all belier, 

Was that same argument — the very same — 

That has been "proed and conned" from, man 
to man, 

Yea, ever since this wondrous world began. 

The ugly creatures, deaf and dumb and blind, 

Devoid of features that adorn mankind, 

Were vain enough, in dull and wordy strife, 

To speculate upon a future life. 

The first was optimistic, full of hope; 

The second, quite dyspeptic, seemed to mope. 

Said Number One, "I'm sure of our salva- 
tion," 

Said Number Two, "I'm sure of our damna- 
tion; 

Our ugly forms alone would seal our fates, 

And bar our entrance through the golden 
gates. 

Suppose that death should take us unawares, 

How could we climb the golden stairs? 

If maidens shun us as they pass us by, 

Would angels bid us welcome in the sky? 

I wonder what great crimes we have commit- 
ted, 

That leaves us so forlorn and so unpitied? 

Perhaps we've been ungrateful, unforgiving; 

'Tis plain to me that life's not worth the liv- 
ing." 

"Come, come, cheer up!" the jovial worm 

replied. 
"Let's take a look upon the other side: 

85 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

Suppose we cannot fly like moths or millers; 
Are we to blame for being caterpillars? 
Will that same God that doomed us crawl the 

earth, 
A prey to every bird that's given birth, 
Forgive our captor as he eats and sings, 
And damn poor us because we have not 

wings? 
If we can't skim the air like owl or bat, 
A worm will turn 'for a' that/ " 

They argued through the summer; autumn 

nigh, 
The ugly things composed themselves to die, 
And so, to make their funeral quite complete, 
Each wrapped him in his little winding sheet. 
The tangled web encompassed them full soon; 
Each for his coffin made him a cocoon. 
All through the winter's chilling blast they 

lay, 
Dead to the world, aye, dead as human clay. 
Lo! Spring comes forth, with all her warmth 

and love; 
She breaks the chrysalis, she resurrects the 

dead — 
Two butterflies ascend encircling her head. 
And so this emblem shall forever be 
A sign of immortality. 



86 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 



THE CHRIST. 

A little slip of a girl, age about 16, of 
Honnelly, Wales, name unknown, a Spirit- 
ualist medium, is the author of the fol- 
lowing inspired poem. It is a prophecy 
of the coming of the New Era of Spirit- 
ualism and Socialism, which she has 
named "The Christ." She says: 

They cry, He comes: The signs are sure, 
All lands are armed for war. 
The mystic number is fulfilled. He comes! 
We answer, Oh, that He would come! We want 
The Christ! We want a God to burn the truth 
Afresh upon the forehead of the world! 
We want a man to walk once more among 
The wrangling Pharisees, to drive the beasts 
And money changers from the temple courts; 
To bring the gospel back again, and prove 
How all unlike the churches are to Christ! 
We want that Christ again, to tell the "saints" 
Their sins; that they were sent to bless the 

poor, 
And they have sold themselves unto the rich; 
That they were sent to preach the works of 

peace, 
And they have filled the world with war of 

words; 
That they were sent the messengers of love. 
And they have driven love out with their 

creeds; 
That they were sent to teach men not to lie, 
Nor trouble when their duty leads to death. 
Oh, for the Christ again! He — He would dare 

87 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

To tell the churches that they lie and cant, 
And talk of serving God — and serve them- 
selves; 
And talk of saving souls — to save their cause; 
And pare and narrow God's divinest truth 
Until a man can hardly be a man 
And member of the church. 

Already Christ is coming. Hear we not 
The footfalls of the Lord? He tramples down 
The cruel hedges man has built about 
The gates that lead to heaven. He rends the 

creeds 
And gives their tatters to the merry winds. 
He does not come as bigots prophesied, 
To choose a handful and condemn the rest, 
To found a Jewish-Gentile kingdom here, 
And roll the world into the past again. 
He comes, the spirit of a brighter age, 
When all that is not good and true shall die; 
When all that's bad in custom, false in creed, 
And all that makes the boor and mars the man 
Shall pass away forever. Yes, He comes — 
To give the world a passion for the truth, 
To fill us with a holy human love, 
To make us sure that ere a man can be 
A saint he first must be a man. 



88 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 



CHAPTER VIII. 

My Brother, my Sister ! I bid you look 
up, and take courage. You are not a 
poor, miserable worm of the dust. You 
were not created for nothing except sor- 
row and doomed to hopeless defeat and 
for final extinction, but for a glorious des- 
tiny. Open your eyes; throw open the 
windows of your soul, and know that you 
are a child of Infinite Intelligence— of 
God— that you are an essential part of 
God. Know ye that ye are deathless, and 
not only deathless but that you have nest- 
ling in that physical body an immortal 
spirit, which possesses dormant, God-like 
powers and possibilities, which will unfold 
more and still more, in the celestial zones, 
until you have attained to that degree of 
power, wisdom, harmony, goodness and 
happiness beyond our ability to conceive. 
Although now in this kindergarten and 
primary school of your Father-Mother 
God, where you have hard lessons to 
learn, and in which you toil and suffer 
and weep; though disappointments and 
sickness and sorrows may surge all about 
you and sometimes submerge you; though 
crushed by poverty, oppressed or deserted 
by your fellowmen, cast out, trampled 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

upon, beaten, bruised and killed, you shall 
some time, somewhere, emerge from all 
your unfavorable environments and clap 
your hands and shout for joy that you 
were taken out of the infinite ocean of im- 
personal unconscious spirit, implanted in 
matter, given a personal and conscious 
existence, and started on an endless jour- 
ney to ineffable happiness and glory. You 
shall yet step from star to star, fly with 
the velocity of light to the blazing suns in 
the depths of infinite space, and sit in 
council with the mighty sages and arch- 
angels in the glorious courts of heaven. I 
bid you to take the cards that Nature has 
dealt out to you, and heroically, trust- 
ingly play the game of life; for be as- 
sured that there is no joker, knave or 
devil who can cheat you out of your hon- 
est winnings. No power on earth, hell or 
heaven, can prevent your ascending the 
golden stairway that leads from earth to 
heaven, if you want to go up higher. 



90 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

REMARKABLE SPIRIT PROCLAMA- 
TION THROUGH ANDREW 
JACKSON DAVIS. 



Not since the days of Jesus Christ has 
the world been blessed by a greater seer, 
prophet and illuminated teacher than was 
Andrew Jackson Davis, who may properly 
be regarded as the father of Modern Spir- 
itualism. He was an illiterate youth when 
wise and exalted angelic personages took 
possession of him, and through his voice 
and pen gave to the world the ' ' Harmonial 
Philosophy " and "Science of Spiritual- 
ism." He published about thirty books 
and pamphlets. In one of them, entitled 
"The Harmonial Man; or, Thoughts for 
the Age," he published in condensed form 
the gist or kernel of the Harmonial Phil- 
osophy, or the religion and politics recom- 
mended by wise spirits for the people of 
earth to adopt, and through him. the Spir- 
its prophesied that in due time the whole 
world would accept Spiritualism as a uni- 
versal religion, and co-operation or social- 
ism as its system of industrialism. 

This proclamation made by denizens of 
the Celestial Spheres through the great 
seer, Davis, more than sixty years ago, is 
a most interesting one, and its republica- 

91 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

tion at this time cannot fail to interes' 
many thousands of people, especially Spir- 
itualists and Socialists, as the inspirers of 
Prophet Davis, in a few words, stated the 
cardinal doctrines of both Spiritualism 
and Socialism. It is prophetic, also, and 
its predictions are being" fulfilled. 

The following is the proclamation that 
came through Medium Davis from wise 
denizens of the Spirit World: 
To All Humanity: 

Again, and again — the Spirit World 
exclaims, and adopts as a principle, 
that — 

Every human being has a right to the 
possession and enjoyment of four condi- 
tions: 

First: A farm without mortgage. 
Second: A home without discord. 
Third: A country without slavery. 
Fourth: A religion without creeds. 
These conditions can be secured only 
by and through Organic Liberty. Liberty 
is the parent of Anarchy wherever it is 
entertained as a mere sentiment — as a 
poem or a song, in the savage mind. The 
salvation of the world lies in "Organic 
Liberty." And America is destined to 
bring this savior into being; it will be 
born in a manger; but the kings of the 
earth shall bow before its simple grandeur 
and majesty! America, in her present 
state, is but the representative of transi- 
tional republicanism and sentimental 
freedom! This is the cause of so much 

92 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

political antagonism — of so much party 
vice and deception! And this is the 
cause, also, of the strength of foreign 
despotism; the sneers of kings and slave- 
holders at American institutions. 

In order to secure Organic Liberty, as 
exhibited in the Principles of Nature, you 
are admonished to form yourselves into a 
Harmonial Brotherhood whose politics 
and religion will be one and the same 
thing. The government will permit no 
monopolizing of the land by the few, to 
the injury of the many; and will arrange 
all kinds of industry so concordantly with 
individual attractions and qualifications, 
as that a just remuneration for it will no 
longer be the degrading incentive to 
labor, as now, but its acompaniment; for, 
when properly arranged, Industry is Hap- 
piness. These conditions, as I am im- 
pressed, can be attained by adopting 
forthwith, as a Band of Brothers, certain 
instrumentalities, now in being, as your 
weapons. 

First: Free Speech, unlimited discus- 
sion. 

Second: Free schools for the masses. 

Third: Freedom of the press, by the 
fecundating power of which you may 
shower upon the people the evangels of 
peace on earth, in the shape of newspa- 
pers, periodicals, pamphlets, tracts of the 
hour, and songs of Truth. 

Fourth: Free churches and honest 
teachers. 

Fifth: And Nature's own religion. 

But I ask you to adopt no local plans — 
only such measures as may conserve the 

93 



TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLE 

purposes of bringing you into closer fra- 
ternal relations, to the end that you may 
conceive of united methods of assisting 
the world's progression. We have 
had enough of sectarianism — enough 
churches built. Let us now leave all 
useless forms, and become the champions 
of Principle. 

And so, friends of humanity! so you 
may teach the masses to venerate the 
Principles of Universal Truth and Unity; 
teach the rising generation to apply the 
right of suffrage to the highest and holi- 
est purposes; obtain the enfranchise- 
ment of the slave; secure the fraterniza- 
tion of all Europe; the analysis of all 
religions; the elevation of the heathen 
into harmonious nationalities; unlimited 
commerce; and the establishment of the 
Spiritual Church of Humanity. 

The foregoing' contains in a nutshell an 
ideal religion, a just system of industrial- 
ism and a perfected government. It would 
be well for all Spiritualists, Socialists, Ra- 
tionalists, and friends of the public 
schools, freedom of speech, a free press, 
and religious liberty, to read the fore- 
going proclamation often enough to fix in 
their memory every statement contained 
therein. 

NOTE. — No claim is made that this "Bible of 
the Twentieth Century" is infallible or iner- 
rant. There are no man-made bibles without 
error. The bible of Nature alone is infallible. 
It behooves man to study Nature's bible and 
so adjust his religious creeds and theories of 
government and harmonize them with Nature 
as nearly as he can understand Nature's ways. 

94 



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